The 7 Dimensions of Wellness.
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Your Overall Health (and Happiness) are determined by all 7 Dimensions of Wellness.
The 7 Dimensions of Wellness include common characteristics and behaviors that can help you to live a healthy and fulfilled life.
- Social Health/Social Wellness – The ability to establish and maintain positive relationships with other people in our world. This includes family, friends, and coworkers. It is important to note that not every relationship needs to be a close one.
- Emotional Health/Emotional Wellness – The ability to understand and love ourselves while also coping appropriately with life challenges. The ability to recognize, acknowledge and share negative and positive feelings in a productive manner is a large part of this.
- Spiritual Health/Spiritual Wellness – The values and beliefs that provide a purpose in our lives. True spiritual health includes being open to different cultures, religions, and philosophies. As well as to allow us to establish peace and harmony.
- Environmental Health/ Environmental Wellness – The ability to recognize our own responsibility to make a positive impact on the quality of our environment. This includes our homes, our communities, and our planet.
- Occupational Health/Occupational Wellness – The ability to get personal fulfillment from our chosen occupation and fulfill work-related requirements while still maintaining balance in our lives.
- Intellectual Health/ Intellectual Wellness – The desire to learn new concepts, improve skills and seek challenges.
- Physical Health/ Physical Wellness – The ability to maintain a healthy quality of life. The ability to recognize that our behaviors impact our wellness.
The full integration of physical, emotional, and social well-being is what will give you true wellness and happiness. Click To Tweet
Then there are, of course, recipes…because they are delicious. 🙂
Which of the 7 dimensions of wellness are you most interested in?
Please let me know in the comments below.
62 thoughts on “The 7 Dimensions of Wellness”
I really appreciate your article. I have found it useful. Thanks for sharing. take care…
I have to comment here, I think such amazing blogs should be there with totally different niches. As you are blogging about different things on one blog and its cool.
Happy to read your blog posts – keep up the great work.
Cheers!
I love this post. It’s perfect for me right now actually. After a few rough years I am just getting started on my wellness journey so it’s nice to see a post which explains exactly what wellness is and what I need to work towards. Thank you! #TriumphantTales
I am so pleased to hear that this post came to you at the perfect time.
I struggle with emotional wellness but I have a brilliant support network around me to help pick me up when needed!
Thank you for sharing this with us at #TriumphantTales. I hope to see you back next week!
I am so pleased to hear that you have a great support network. That is so important.
I think it’s wonderful that people are now realizing, and it is being taught, that all of these things are important and a part of who we are. Thank you for sharing with us on Party in Your PJ’s!
I taught in the Lifelong Wellness division at our community college for years. This was my absolute favorite discussion with my students. Thank you.
That must have been an amazing experience. It sounds like wonderful work.
I’ve been working a lot on emotional and spiritual wellness this past year. One area I could improve in is environmental wellness. Thanks for helping me think about wellness with a wider lens. I found this post on the Over the Moon link-up.
Christie, thank you so much. One of my biggest goals is to open people’s minds to all different ideas.
Your health and wellness is so important to your overall wellbeing, that it is crucial to follow these steps, they are helpful. thanks for the post.
We certainly are an integration of body mind spirit and they all are important for our wellness, Thanks for an inspiring article..
Indeed we are.
This is a really helpful post – I’ve been really struggling with occupational wellness lately, mainly because whilst I love my work I am really struggling to manage my workload with scant child care available. I’ve been overwhelmed and stressed as a result, and this post makes sense of it all. Thanks for sharing x #triumphanttales
I am so pleased that it has helped. I am also hopeful that you will get some more help with child care.
I like how you broke this down into seven sections. emotional and mental health are more important that a lot of people realize.
Thank you.
I think Occupational wellness is just so important and sometimes overlooked, and yet we spend so much time at work and it totally spills over into our life.
I would have to agree.
I love the idea of looking at the different levels separately. I am currently thinking a lot about changing jobs because I don’t feel I am at the best level with regards to how I feel at my current job.
Occupational Wellness… if you feel dissatisfied at work then this can carry over to all other areas of your life.
Visiting from Blogghetti Link Party, I always get useful tips from Your Posts. This one too gives practical life tips to wellness , thanks for sharing.
I just finished reading a book this morning that touched on all of this. Most of us I dont think understand how much of each these play into out wellness and success overall. Great read!
What book was it? I may want to read it too.
I am very interested in physical health and wellness. I need to pay more attention to my health and fitness.
Those are great focuses.
Yes, I think that mental health is as important as physical health. Thanks for sharing with SYC.
hugs,
Jann
Hi Elise,
I must say that I was only aware about physical and mental wellness. Never thought about social wellness, spiritual, occupational and environmental wellness.
Wellness is that we all desire still we neglect it most of the times because busy in other things. Thanks for sharing these.
Isn’t it interesting to think of all the states of wellness?
I think I would like to learn more about social health and wellness as well as emotional health and wellness. I feel like although all 7 dimensions work together in forming overall a good and balanced state of living. I find these two dimensions work hand-in-hand and are similar in some ways.
Yes, I agree. Each dimension of wellness definitely has some carry over into each other.
I never categorized wellness as these. This is a very eyeopening post. I will have all these in mind. Great post!
Thanks. IT definitely makes you start thinking about things differently.
yes I agree with all of these and you only need to be struggling in one area for everything else to be affected I find!
Very true, indeed. One affects all.
Totally agree with on this. well being of Emotional and social health as important as mental and physical health.
Thank you for your feedback.
You know I’ve never thought of it this way. I liked that you pointed out environmental health too, most people miss that!
Yes, I think they do too but it really does affect the others.
Hi Elise
I totally agree with you. All these dimensions are very important for the overall health and wellness.
Thanks for sharing!
You are most welcome.
I absolutely agree. And it so important to recognize when one of these areas is in need of our personal care. Thank you for the wonderful content.
You are so very welcome.
i’m gonna have to look into the emotional health option. i could really use some help in that department right about now
We have several posts on this site that you may find helpful. Just click on the emotional health tag.
Dr Elise,
I really liked #2 – “The ability to recognize, acknowledge and share negative and positive feelings”. As a nurse myself, I see this as a lost art with most of my patients. They ‘sort-of’ can recognize the feelings. But they almost always consider them to be bad and stop right there. They never really go any deeper and understand the why behind the feelings, flesh them out, understand acknowledge and SHARE them.
With as much social media in our culture today, and sharing huge amounts of data, it gives a false sense of sharing. The deep feelings and emotions are never shared. But I have found once those feelings are recognized, acknowledged, shared…they can be released. And when the releasing is complete, the healing can occur. ~ Johanna
Johanna, thank you for such a full and thoughtful response. I do agree that full healing cannot occur until we have released that which is holding us back.
I’m not sure I can pick just one dimension that interests me most! Spiritual and emotional health are definitely two areas that interest me. Life has taught me that nobody controls my happiness other than me. In the past year, I’ve also made it a personal goal to be sure I am making a minimal negative impact on the environment. Can’t wait to read more of your thoughts about each dimension.
Thank you so much. I am so looking forward to sharing more. I love your personal goal. 🙂
Thank you for the reminder. As I’ve got older I’ve realised the paramount importance of emotional and mental well being and trying to focus on that as much as everything else. I find that if I can manage to sleep, eat and exercise everything else seems to fall into place. It’s just being kind to myself and doing my best to stick to them.
You are exactly right. Be kind to yourself, keep healthy sleep habits, exercise on most days and eat healthily. Then all will fall into place.
I have come to understand how all these types of wellness work together. I spent too many years compartmentalizing. When one part of your life is out of health, others follow. Emotional health definitely affects all of the others.
Yes, they certainly do. It is best to work on making everything jive together.
Hi Elise,
Great post. I think #3 Spiritual Health/Spiritual Wellness is foremost for me right now. After having a few life-altering events, I’m looking more to learn, maintain and live a Christian life.
I grew up going to church with my mom for what seemed like “all the time” and I ran the other way for so many years once I got older. Things are more clear to me now and I understand more. That’s where my focus is at right now.
You have so much awesome stuff on your site. I remember when you first started it. You’re doing a great service for people.
Monna, thank you so much. I so appreciate your feedback.
Really enjoyed reading this consciousness raising post. The seven dimensions of wellness provide “buckets“ for me to organize and create a healthy and balanced life. Rather than being separate and compartmentalized, the awareness of the seven dimensions allows a means to integrate and live a life of wholeness. Thank You! Xo, Evelyn, PathofPresence.com
Evelyn, thank you very much for your feedback. We are definitely of like minds.
I am definitely most interested in emotional health/wellness. I feel that is as important as anything else.
I believe that in a big way it is the base of all other wellness.
I love that you are discussing this. I used to think it was all about health and fitness and never realized how important all the other elements were. Spiritual and mental health are just as equally important.
Yes, at one point I was the same. That is the usual way we have all been taught.